Firefox Inches Toward 1.0 Milestone
The popular Firefox Web browser is inching closer toward a 1.0 milestone release on its product roadmap. Today, the Mozilla Foundation announced the availability of a preview release of Firefox 0.9. Firefox 0.9 is billed as a faster and more secure alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
Firefox developers vow to "raise the bar" by zeroing in on four main areas of concentration: ease of use, performance, robustness, and standards compliance.
"Months of development and hundreds of open source developers contributed towards this release, working within the Mozilla Foundation's proven development model," commented Ben Goodger, Firefox Lead Engineer.
The browser can import data from competing browsers such as the market leading Internet Explorer; sports a new default theme for Windows and Linux users; includes a download manager, a pop-up blocker, tabbed browsing, and has a comprehensive online help system; as well as being auto-updating and customizable.
One of Firefox's most intriguing features is its "extension" manager. Thus far, over 200 browser extensions have been developed by open source community members to extend Firefox beyond its core functionality. Extensions serve a variety of purposes ranging from "skinning" the browser to checking spelling, or even searching through eBay listings from within browser toolbars.
An earlier preview of Firefox 0.8 coincided with a name change that stripped Firefox of its previous moniker, "Firebird." Firebird conflicted with the name of another open source project, resulting in the change. Version 0.9 includes incremental improvements over 0.8 and boasts better performance while loading Web pages.
There is some evidence that Firefox is succeeding in its hunt for dissatisfied users of competing Web browsers. According to a Mozilla spokesperson, nearly 3 million users downloaded the 0.8 preview.
Later on this week, the Mozilla Foundation will upgrade its Mozilla Internet Suite to version 1.7 and issue a preview release of Thunderbird, a standalone e-mail application that complements Firefox. Version 1.7 of Mozilla incorporates Web browsing, mail client, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), and a Web page editor.